is forwarded during winter in frozen blocks to their different communities.
The moral law of the twelve commandments issued by Philippovitch is rigid and austere; the use of spirits, marriage, and presence at wedding-feasts or similar festivals, incontinency, theft,[1] and swearing, are forbidden; brotherly love, belief in the Holy Ghost, and secrecy upon matters of faith are enjoined.
It is not possible to ascribe the rapid increase of this sect to the silly legends related of its founders, or to any special influence of its moral code, which is in itself neither new nor in any wise remarkable; its success and popularity must rather be attributed to the doctrine of personal inspiration, which it persistently inculcated.
Its adherents were taught to believe in the spirit as made manifest in themselves, to trust to the promptings of their own souls, to accept the effervescence of their own imaginations as evidence of the Holy Ghost working within them; added to this was the powerful stimulant of imposed secrecy; the ignorant and credulous love the unknown, and the mysteries of the faith and worship were concealed from strangers with a jealous care, which excited wonder and curiosity. "Keep my precepts secret," says their dodecalogue; "reveal them neither to father nor mother; though thou be scourged with the knout, or burned With fire, suffer without opening thy mouth;" and the proselyte, at his initiation, swears to preserve silence upon all he may see or hear, "without impatience
- ↑ The commandment forbidding theft, a very common weakness of the Russian peasant, is conveyed in figurative and singularly impressive language: "Thou shalt not steal: whoever shall have stolen even a kopeck shall bear it upon his head at the judgment day, and his sin shall not be forgiven him until the kopeck shall be melted in the flames of hell." A kopeck is a large copper coin, of less value than a cent.
